viernes, diciembre 31, 2010

This track was made using the korg ES-1 and the Yamaha DX27, the piano sound wasn't sampled, both instruments were played live, well the ES-1 as you know is a drum machine that can be programmed to play a song, this means arrange a group of patterns and give them a playing order. This track isn't using that option, just using one programmed pattern introducing different beats using an effect.

lunes, diciembre 27, 2010

I don't even know why we never heard of this film, well I have an idea why... but anyways.. this movie was unexpectedly good. It's nice to see the talent of Alex Rivera being praised by awards but it's even better to know people like his films and that he's receiving support for his creations. I really enjoyed this movie, what I liked most was that it is in spanish.

The movie also reflects a reality we live in Mexico, it can be catalogue as sci-fi but shows real life situations that happen in the frontier towns like Tijuana, where work force and human energy are sold to foreign companies and countries.

The mods are the five switches in the upper left corner of the SCK-30 (a.k.a. SC-300), and two buttons in the right that create static noise.

All the switches modify only the rythms, they isolate each component of the rythms; bass, snares, and the accents. Two of the switches create a feedback, one of them only affects the bass creating a more artificial sound for it. The other one creates an overall feedback making it sound higher.

sábado, diciembre 25, 2010

One thing about having friends is that, they will listen to you, even if what you say may not be relevant for their lives, or may not be of their interest at all, but they will listen because they care about you. In their own way of course...

I didn't know how much I appreciate that people could open up with me, or that I could open up to someone and they respect my privacy and care about what I say to the point that they can express an opinion about the matter or provide me with some advice.

This track is not finished but I felt I had to somehow publish it. I'm going to work on it a little bit more, in fact, there are already 2 versions of it, but this one I like it better, it feels more natural than the other one, maybe because is version number one.

martes, diciembre 21, 2010

Another one of my favorite programs is Freebirth. Linux bass synthesizer, sampler player and sequencer, it can create great delays, and distortion (saturation) to the samples.

It consist of three windows, the main and biggest window where the patterns are configured and arranged, also here is the mixer with volume control. The second window is for pitching each of the steps of the samples, so you can create a singular rythm and modify the samples you load. And the third window where the delay seems to be affected. This small window (which appears down on the right side of the screenshot) also have some knobs to configure the delay time and saturation.

I used it to experiment with live changes and distortions of sounds, as you cannot record or save a session.

What I used to do was take screenshots of the order of samples in the sequencer. and the knobs positions. Pretty much of what you do on a drum machine or a custom knob.

This is the first experiment with the fisher sc-300 and the korg ES-1, while I was recording it, I didn't realized that the input volume was too high, causing the lack of quality and sudden saturation in the peaks.

I use Audacity to record sound, it's a very familiar interface, what it used to be sound forge, and other sound editors. Ardour also gives you more professional options, I like it, but in the end, audacity hasn't crashed as many times as Ardour has done it on my computer. Good software I just can't use it by now. Besides, audacity comes with a large library of plug-ins, which are very handful.

lunes, diciembre 20, 2010

I'm using the korg electribe ES-1, and the keyboard of the fisher SC-300 that I modified (I will be posting the pics here soon). This keyboard is a very fun instrument to use, it has a very artificial lo-fi sound which I really enjoy.

The thing about this track is to show what can be done with the mods, individualizing the rythm components in the fisher sc-300 (post will come soon I promise)

This is a track made fooling around with a korg electribe ES-1 and a yamaha dx-27, I was playing both at the same time so there are a few parts were the timing is not good, also another thing you can do with these guys is either daisy chain them, or use their midi interface to interact between them...

To me windows is good for two things: games, and music software. Unfortunately there aren't as many programs as I would like for linux with the same capabilities that many windows programs have. It's good to know that more and more people are turning heads to open source apps, and OS, but we aren't there yet. Still there's a larger path to be walked in this matter.

Virtual DJ was one of the first virtual consoles I tried. I remember using versions 1.8 and 2.x,

Back in those days when I was more into mixing than music production I did this track, using a jazz track I found in a collection I had... but anyways leave you with this.

I used to put songs (a.k.a. dj) for a spanish online radio station, my music space (which consisted in a 2 hours playlist) was called El taladro electrónico, which means The electronic drill, and I played a lot my favorite electronic musicians.

Sociable

Bugs In The System

Influenced by the music from video games, I experiment with different rhythms and sounds from synthesizers to create an atmospheric music directed at visual stimulation, Bugs In The System (aka BITS) it's a musical project from Tijuana, México that is still developing in the local music scene.